I think you might have overreacted a bit, well, a lot.

What he is saying is that many people get work done in environments that are easy. The ABSOLUTE MOST ideal situation, BY FAR, for the VAST majority of people would be that a person uses and interacts with a computer without the person even knowing anything about the computer, maybe not even knowing how a computer works, or even that they are using a computer at all.

Think about it. The vast majority of people interface with computers MANY times throughout a day without even realising that those are actual computers that they are using. At the ATM, in their cars, in their toys, in their CD player, or in his example, a mechanic who may not know much about computers but just wants to use it, so why not try to recreate the ease of use of said devices on the Desktop?

If you don't like the example, replace the word "mechanic" with "stay at home mom" or "English professor" or "Painter" or "Three year old kid" or "A fresh out of college Computer Science major who is thrust onto a computer with an OS he has never used before" or anybody else who interfaces with computers all the time but doesn't necessarily know the intricies of it.

The REAL point is that it WOULD be folly to expect somebody like a mechanic to need to configure files from the command line with emacs. The reason: If you were a busy mechanic who works at or owns a business, would you rather spend your time editing ~/.icewm/prefences or would you rather spend your time working on cars?

The majority of professionals in any field would rather spend their time, even if it just meant more money, doing things that directly involve that field.


So, you could install slackware on a machine, and then use xwmconfig and select Fluxbox, or some other overhyped "leet" windowmanager, and then type up startx, but what do you have? You have nothing. I GUARANTEE that not one business owner would want that on their machines, because it would mean that, EVEN IF YOU DO know what you are doing, that when you first sit down on the PC, your first step is to edit a text file, not to actually run the programs you need for your business.

Fluxbox because of old hardware.

I use KDE most of the time. I have been know to favor fluxbox, especially on my old 233MHz HP VectraVL. I tried GNOME and XFCE4. Of those two, I prefer XFCE4, but I'd choose KDE or Flux over either GNOME or XFCE4. KDE is not without it's own set of problems, but I have had better success making it behave the way I want it to. Flux is cool, and 1337. I'll have to try OpenBox, since I read in this thread that it is more 1337.

cwwilson721 - I understand your frustration. Those of us with dirt under our nails, scars on our knuckles, calluses, greasy keyboards and greasy mice are often thought of as illerate. It isn't our fault others are too quick to judge. I respect you. God bless you, my friend.

I'm an auto mechanic, more often than not my hands are quite greasy. Though I usualy try to think of myself a bit more skilled than "mere typing and basic mouse usage".

Im sure if he asked you to replace, say an intake manifold gasket, you would be equaly as dumbfounded.

And why exactly should we feel offended because people "assume"? It's only natural and it happens all the time.

I'm as much anti-elitist as anybody here as you would have noticed, but I don't think Woodsman's post was in the least offensive. All he was saying is that a lot of people do a lot of useful things other than mess with computers and they don't think messing with a computer to get it to do what they want is a value-add for them. They'd rather go about doing their job rather than spend hours (or days) configuring a computer so that they can use it for some purpose... it's a perfectly acceptable statement and I find nothing elitist about that observation.

I think it shows more about us so-called "geeks" that we take offense to such observations when others wouldn't bat an eyelid. It is a kind of reactionary reverse elitism because we don't want to be seen as elitist ourselves.

Edit: Nobody has to justify themselves here. I find these forum dynamics tiresome because everybody wants to defend their position to the hilt, never acknowledging that there are more shades of grey than black and white. It always happens whenever there's a disagreement.

Oh well...

Hmmm.. I'm very confused. I saw absolutely nothing wrong what-so-ever with Woodsman's post. I knew exactally what he was talking about the whole time and it was well thought and also well written... Is it a full moon out or something?

Woodsman, did you happen to notice any birds flying backwards while you were on your porch?

I used to use fluxbox but have been playing around with KDE because of the integrated file manager, desktop and recycle bin. Integration with some GTK apps eg. gvim is a pain in the ass though. Flux would be awesome if there was a good graphical standalone file manager included in slack eg. rox filer, with some capability for a trash can.

Well...
I don't think that Woodsman's post was offensive, as it was not intended that way.
I understand cwwilson721 attitude though I think that you over-reacted a lil' bro.

This mess is all about how you can take things or comments and deal with them without being affected. For example, if someone says (here comes a racist comment that I've heard a lot of times): "mexicans are so dumb that can't even play computer games". Well, I'm mexican but I'm not dumb at all (ok, only in the mornings ), so I won't assume that comment was directed to me, anyway I won't get outright offended but I could put those words on a challenge and see whom gets more frags.

Everyone is different, so everyone is unique. In that uniqueness that we all have in a different way, everyone is equal. To do whatever you want saving the respect that equality, that's freedom.

My

that's just stupid. i stated my reasons for wanting to try it: it complies with standards, and it doesn't have a taskbar that i never use.

"1337?" i'm 41 years old. i really don't give a crap whether some 16 year old kid on the internet thinks i'm "1337."

what do you use? KDE? from a windows user's perspective, that's relatively unknown and obscure, and therefore according to you, "1337." you should use windows, it's less "1337" and under the radar. @ss.

fluxbox. KISS.

You win the internets!!!


Relax.

1. It doesn't matter WHAT I think of your desktop.
2. My statement clearly satirical and not serious.
3. Even if I WAS seriousy, you assume that I am 16 years old because my opinion is different from yours? That view alone is immature in and of itself.

why not try to post something useful for the person who asked the question, rather than something "satirical" (and useless) about it? like, maybe even going to the site and posting something like this:

well hey, some of that sounds pretty good, don't you think? maybe even good reasons to try it out?

Well.... If you'd look a few posts before that, and then a few posts after that you'd see that I have posted many useful things in this thread, and if you look one person under my post you'd see that somebody else "got" what I was trying to say.


Well... to be quite honest those are features you can find in practically ANY 2006 windowmanager.

so that gives you the right to be a d!ck and slam people who use or mention using openbox? i don't get it.

pretty ironic that someone would pull some elitist crap in a thread with a big disagreement about elitism.

Disagreement? What disagreement?

This has to be the most dysfunctional thread ever.

...Low blow alert...
I'm still getting over the part about the marigolds. Man, I've had to unload boxcars for a week at a time with 12 hour shifts, but marigolds? Please, anything but that.